blank canvas
by puertoricanjane
Summary: "Try to look punk," Vidalia says.


"Try to look punk," Vidalia says.

She's painting Amethyst again, and everything's like usual except she's wearing Vidalia's leather jacket, the one Vidalia used to wear all the time, back when she had apathetic gum chewing down to an art form. Greg would say 'the Marty days' but screw Marty. Vidalia had the jacket way before Marty darkened the back of Greg's van anyway.

Amethyst's messed with the sleeves, rolling them up over her hands. They're too long for her, and Amethyst could shape shift, make her arms longer, but she doesn't, like she shrugged on Vidalia's jacket with a grin instead of shifting a likeness. _Human clothing is weird_ , Vidalia remembers Amethyst saying, back when her hair was short and she looked like a six-year-old; _it is and isn't a part of you._ She was still always down to wear Vidalia's jacket. Amethyst was down for a lot of things.

"Since when do I have to try?" Amethyst's smirking, so Vidalia smirks back. She looks good like this, smirking in Vidalia's jacket, but Amethyst always looks good.

"Oh yeah," Vidalia drawls, "you're super punk even when you're a cat. The most punk cat I know."

"Hey, cats are scrappy, dude. Especially alley ones. You don't wanna know what kinda scuffles I've gotten into with the one behind the arcade."

Vidalia laughs. She does that a lot with Amethyst, probably more than any other person she knows. "Well, now I know who to put my money on."

"You mean you weren't betting on me before?" Amethyst says. "I'm hurt, Vi."

They could go on forever like this; have, in fact. It's different from her other models, where it's a lot of quiet broken up by the occasional 'tilt your head' or 'look over your shoulder'. With Amethyst, bantering is an important part of her artistic process. It's why she's her muse; she's not only inspiring, but fun, and Vidalia finds it a heady mix, thinks she could paint Amethyst the rest of her life and never be bored.

They talk about everything: old pranks, usually on Greg, because really, he's just too easy, or reminisces on painting the town red, sometimes literally (Vidalia had an intense graffiti art phase pre-SC, okay, and Amethyst wasn't half bad, helped give her murals a nice, edgy flair.) They have a good laugh over someone asking her where Sour Cream's dad was ("Nowhere's-ville, population: one deadbeat dad.") Amethyst even talks about gem stuff a little and Vidalia thinks how cool it'd be if Garnet and Amethyst stayed fused long enough for her to paint Sugilite.

"Sugilite's good with the mashing," Amethyst says, when Vidalia mentions as much. "The standing still? Not so much. You'd have better luck with Opal."

"But Sugilite's more like you, right? No offense to Opal - she sounds like a babe - but Sugilite's my kind of giant woman. Also you weren't so good with the standing still yourself."

Amethyst grins, cheeks tinged a darker purple. "You know that's right."

She didn't mind; it was cute, seeing that kind of raw energy try to contain itself. She minded more when she came back into the room to find Amethyst in the middle of eating one of her paint brushes. She actually has a painting of that somewhere, part of a series she calls 'Amethyst-edible'. It weirdly sold really well.

"You almost done?"

Amethyst takes shape on the canvas, the twist of her mouth, the fall of her hair. Vidalia could probably paint Amethyst in her sleep. "You can't rush genius."

A snort. "Is that what we're calling it now?"

"Okay, this coming from the space rock that said my painting of your wrestling alter-ego was the best thing you'd ever seen?"

"Well, yeah, because it was. And that's earth space rock, thank you very much."

Vidalia doesn't think she'll ever understand the particulars of that and not even because Amethyst's kind of touchy on the subject. "Okay," she says. "I'm done."

Amethyst stretches her arms over her head before coming over. She takes in the painting, eyes squinting comically, then yawns. "I'm a babe. No surprise there."

She's aiming for disaffected, but Vidalia sees the pleasure she's trying (and failing) to hide, and wonders if Amethyst is really transparent or having captured every micro expression of hers gives her something of an unfair advantage. Maybe it's both. Maybe it's neither. Maybe by now they just get each other, single mom and alien rock, in ways that loser Marty never could.

Amethyst looks from the painting to her and smirks and it's like Vidalia's seeing double.

"I'm a babe," she says; "and _you're_ a mess."

She touches her fingers to Vidalia's cheek. They come back stained, to Vidalia's not-surprise. Such is the joys of painting. "Don't you love a good mess though?"

"I kind of do," Amethyst says, smirk softening, and Vidalia meets her halfway so she doesn't have to strain her neck to lean up to meet her.


End file.
